The Monastery

Chapter 33: Anger

A few more days passed, and Susant had now been able to sit under the tree for as long as nine hours without moving. Yet even though he was making much progress with his patience and self-discipline, he was beginning to become frustrated with the trial of calling lightning from the sky.

The day before, he had been sitting in the food hall waiting to do dishes when he overheard a group of monks arguing amongst themselves. The language of this world had been revealing itself to him in fragments, so he didn't understand the entirety of the conversation, but at one point, they had spoken of a monk who had been able to call the rain.

This had set a fire burning in Susant's heart. It was as if the world had heard his questions of possibility and answered. But since that moment, in every waking hour, he had come no closer to being able to call a storm from the sky, let alone command a blade of grass to wiggle.

He was beginning to feel that fire turn to anger when, Kamala, the nun from the water offerings, had happened to walk past him that day. She came to a stop, looking at Susant for a long while with those same deep eyes. He gave her a slight nod of the head, then smiled at her. Yet, his smile was forced. He could feel it. He didn't mean for it to not be genuine, but the annoyance in his heart over his impeding failure was too much to ignore.

Kamala took a seat beside Susant. "Hello there," she said, surprisingly enough speaking in his native tongue. He acknowledged her, but deep down couldn't help but feel as if she were interrupting something very important.

"You seem a little tense."

Susant sighed, and then shrugged.

"Don't overwork yourself," she said with a soft smile. "Your intuitive mind already understands what it is you aim to do. It is, however, your thinking mind, or your ego, that has the real trouble learning."

Susant raised an eyebrow, not quite following.

"Our thinking minds are unfortunately governed by a set of rules. Those rules often keep us from learning the simplest of things. They say the intuitive mind is the absence of ego, and that it is the ego that sees complexity in a simple thing."

Mastery is the result of simplification. Susant remembered the words his father had once told him. Easier said than done.

The nun laughed to herself. "It is lucky for us that the thinking mind can be tricked into letting the intuitive mind take over. I believe it is one of our greatest lessons, to learn how to still the thinking mind, for all the answers you seek are already inside, resting intuitively."

Susant knew what the intuitive mind was. He had read books before that spoke of it. It was the part of him that instinctually made choices, without the need of thought, logic, or knowledge. They were, in a sense, his truest feelings. Though, like I said, thought Susant, easier said than done.

"Remember, Susant, that if you feel frustration or anger, it is most likely coming from forcing something that is not working. Have you ever tried catching the wind between your fingers? Or crushing water in your hand? I suspect someone who tried either of these would also end up quite irritated."

Are you telling me that I'm going about this the wrong way?

"We are all raised in a world where force reigns supreme. If something doesn't work, it is fixed. If something is not exactly how we want it, we change it. However, this teaches us that we have mastery over the world around us. That is ignorance. There are many things that cannot be forced, and when we find those things and realize our powerlessness, frustration and anger is what grows from it."